The POCAN grant has enabled us to link our resources together, so that if children are seen by the family resource center, and thought to have a developmental delay or disability, they would be referred to birth-to-three. If I see children in families in my initial visit that wouldn't be eligible for birth-to-three, I might then refer them to home visitation through the public health department. If it's a first time mother, I might (refer her to) the Department of Social Services if there are risks, or through the Family Resource Center if that family just wants access to resources and a home visiting program. It's created a continuum for families, so there's a place for everyone. That's really exciting."

Click here for Memorandums of Understanding and Birth to Three Transition Agreement.

"Actually, another piece of that is how we visually depicted this to others in the community when we first talked about what our home visitation continuum was really all about. We literally took each of us, and had to stand in front of a group and say ' OK, here's the UW- Extension, here's the Family Resource Center, and here's Public Health, and here's DSS, and here's birth-to-three.'

" --and Head Start, and public schools. "

" --and we talked about each of our strengths, individually, but when we came together, literally_shoulder-to-shoulder, the idea was that no family would fall between the cracks. "

One of the criteria for the POCAN Home Visitation model was that there be High Risk families involved--whether it be socio-economic factors, drug and alcohol abuse, whatever…so instead of saying that POCAN stands for “Prevention of Child Abuse & Neglect” we renamed our program. The initials for our program on our brochures stand for “Promoting Opportunities for Care and Nurturing” …We think that’s a real positive name, and it allows people to really look at what is our focus: though our focus is the prevention of child abuse and neglect, it’s really a positive program. We want them to care and nurture the children…

The other thing that POCAN offers for people in the community that a regular Home Visitation program doesn’t offer is we have flexible funds. We utilize those flexible funds in a variety of different ways, such as last summer we had a picnic basket that we put together, for each of the families in both POCAN programs, that provided hot dogs and buns and suntan lotion...some safety things for the kids, such as if the baby’s nursing, a pacifier and sippy cups...things that help them because they can’t afford all those things themselves. Just a fun little thing that makes you feel good--a picnic basket… That’s the big idea behind POCAN: families. Making sure that our families and communities have supports, feel comfortable in a relationship that’s existing, which is us in POCAN, and allows them the comfort and the ability to call someone in times of need. Those are the little things that POCAN offers that makes it exciting to be a part of.